My friends seem to think I have a problem because I’m a Catholic who likes free markets. More specifically, I take my faith seriously, but I also incline towards the view that global markets are less free than they should be.

But we’re nothing if not forgiving here at Acton, so if you weren’t able to be there, we’re posting the audio of Jordan’s talk below. Enjoy, and watch this space for info on our next Acton on Tap event!

Now one could argue about the details of the DIA’s day-to-day operations, the compensation package for its director, and so on. But apart from these details of stewardship of the DIA itself, the real object lesson in bad stewardship has to do with the city government. Rife with structural corruption, cronyism, and incompetence, the city has been unable to provide the basic services and protection that it is responsible for, despite the best efforts of so many individuals working within the city government. So when the city cannot do the primary things it needs to do, it should lose the privilege of overseeing the secondary things, at the very least until it proves itself to be a responsible steward.(more…)

If you are a free marketeer offended by Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) — in which he critiqued “deified” market capitalism and attacked income inequality — ask yourself: What should the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church say about economics in 2013? Should he take a victory lap over free enterprise’s defeat of Communism as if it were 1993?

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Certainly now is not a time for “end of history” triumphalism that fails to recognize every human construct is imperfect and generates tradeoffs. We live in a fallen world. Such understanding is actually crucial to conservatism. Leave utopianism through “smarter policy” to the Left. Pro-market advocates need to consider that faster GDP growth may be necessary but not sufficient, that a rising tide may not lift all boats if accelerating automation means a vast swath of workers face unemployment or stagnant wages, as some economists on the left and right warn.

Mary Ann Glendon makes an excellent point about the outcry for more corporate responsibility while government is simultaneously stripping away the rights of religious conscience of businesses. In The Boston Globe, Glendon notes,

The simple truth is that if we want businesses, incorporated or not, to be responsible for their actions, they must be treated as having some moral agency. And with moral agency and accountability must go the freedom to act in accordance with conscience.

The push to ghettoize freedom of religion solely into the houses of worship is of course a disturbing trend. When the religious rights of civil society are pushed aside and made subservient to the state, we get not the church serving as conscience, but the state ruling tyrannically over man. “Once religion is reduced to nothing more than privatized conscience, the public square has only two actors in it—the state and the individual,” says Richard John Neuhaus.

In the nation of Kenya, large families (4-5 children) are the norm. While it is difficult to make blanket statements about a nation as diverse as Kenya, children are typically valued in Kenyan families. One woman, Isabela Samora, recounts her experience of awaiting her first child:

I can’t wait to see my baby. To be able to hold those tiny hands and see those feet that give me some serious kicks to the ribs. I can’t wait to look at those eyes and see myself in them. The best bit I think about being a mom is seeing yourself in your child.